I'm always on the lookout for games that are interesting, and since this isn't exactly related to Kickstarter games, I thought I'd start a new thread for anything you might dig up that's worth checking out.

Kerbal Space ProgramLike space exploration? This game lets you build your own rockets, satellites, and space shuttles to reach...well, whatever you want. The game is still in progress, and the orbital mechanics make it pretty hardcore in terms of difficulty curves. It is available on Steam, but I'm pretty sure the main site has a demo version available for free.

Steam has the a demo as well, but I have not checked that one. The main site demo used to be an older version of the game that what you get if you buy the license.(Steam Page)

Papers, PleaseYou play an immigration imspector. It is your job to keep potential smugglers, terrorists, and spies out of your fictional country. This game is also a work in progress, but the mechanics and aestetic alone make it worth checking out.(Steam Greenlight Page)

Feel free to share your own discoveries, too.

Last edited by superjawes on Tue Apr 30, 2013 6:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.

"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP"

Papers, Please is interesting but it's not a finished game at this point. They need the funding and time to finish up a real game. Still it's a pleasant little demo that I would recommend people get and try out.

I think KSP counts as a game because it is a sim, but keep in mind IT IS VERY MUCH A SIM. Even if they add a campaign mode, you aren't going to get very far without knowing or learning about orbital mechanics.

Papers, Please definitely needs a lot more work and funding, but I would throw money at that just from the beta experience. I think it is very smart.

"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP"

Sword of the Stars: The PitThis peculiar spinoff of the Sword of the Stars space strategy series is a fantastic "rogue-like", with completely randomly generated levels populated with a great array of interesting traps, enemies, and treasures. I really can't recommend this game enough; it has unbelievably deep crafting and cooking systems, and players have to contend with both bodily health (as in, not getting shot) and food to stay alive. One of the only roguelikes I've ever played with a heavy focus on ranged attacks! It's available for $9.99 on Steam.

Rusty HeartsRusty Hearts is a free-to-play dungeon crawler developed by Windyzone in Korea and distributed in the US by Perfect World. This game has been continually ignored and underrated since its release, which is a darn shame, because it's probably the very best game of its type. Fantastic self-aware and tongue-in-cheek dialogue tell a story that's really better than it needed to be, given the intense, combo-focused nature of the gameplay that by itself is enough to earn this game a recommendation. You can pick it up at the official site, or on Steam.

Blacklight: RetributionAnother Perfect World-distributed game, this time developed by ZOMBIE Studios. A follow-up to the poorly-received Blacklight: Tango Down, this free-to-play online FPS is quite different from its predecessor. Retribution is primarily a competitive multiplayer-focused game with a wide variety of game modes and completely customizable weapons and armor loadouts, not to mention mecha, airstrikes, wave survival, and more! The game has no glaring or serious flaws, representing what I consider to be the current state-of-the-art in competitive online FPS games, and it features stellar DX11 graphics courtesy of the latest Unreal Engine 3.5. It's free to play, and you can pick it up at the official site, or on Steam.

Mars: War LogsThis came-out-of-nowhere game from French developer Spiders: Game Weavers is easily overlooked, due to the vague title and unconvincing screenshots on Steam. Don't make that mistake! This game is $20 full price, and having gotten it for that price, it feels like I've gotten away with something. It's an action RPG not unlike Mass Effect or similar games, with an engrossing, branching storyline, deep, timing-based combat (think Assassin's Creed or the "Arkham" Batman games), and gorgeous graphics that highlight stellar character design. The cyberpunk-on-Mars aesthetic is NOT to be missed. Pick it up on Steam now for just $20!

ChanteliseChantelise is a GREAT little 3D platforming action game by EasyGameStation, the makers of the much more popular Recettear. While Recettear was primarily a shop-running simulation, Chantelise is more familiar to most gamers, with relatively simplistic graphics and gameplay. One of the main draws, for both games, is the wonderful storytelling, with a surprising amount of drama for a game with such a silly premise and lighthearted visual style. Chantelise is often overlooked among a sea of similar games, and that's a shame, because it's quite unique under the surface. It's only $10 on Steam, and you can often pick it up even cheaper as a package with Recettear. Notably, it runs smoothly even on netbook-class hardware, so pick it up as a backup game on those long plane flights.

I can speak for Blacklight Retribution being a great game, but I can also speak for it being one of the most horrible examples of the money pit when it comes to F2P games.

Sure, you don't need to spend money, but you could easily end up spending hundreds or thousands to get everything. (I'm not averse to spending money, but I am averse to it being completely unreasonable.)

Been playing Warframe myself which has a much more balanced service as far as what they expect you to spend (it has some things you can buy with normal currency, some you can buy with in game currency, some you can build with blueprints from the marketplace, some you can only build with blueprints found in the Alerts...it's quite a diverse game even without spending a cent. The only thing that's VERY HARD to get through building is the actual Warframes beyond the first one.)

Just started playing Warframe myself less then 3 days ago. If you are active and just upgrade your initial warframe - you can get quite far in as little as 2 days. Just crafted a paris and dual ethers and got myself up a notch or three by that. So compared to say diablo it's much less of a grind since you can actually gather resources more focused since they aren't totally random drops.

That said, Im grinding resources to get the glaive (triple bladed throwing boomerang knife) and that is harsh since it's usually a weapon reserved for platinum (real money equilent).

Also, so far, being very early in, the game is nice. Gameplay can somewhat be compared to mass effect 3 multiplayer but in a larger setting, but it also more shallow since you really cant combo like you can there. On the other hand you have guns/swords and can wallrun and do vaults against walls so....

Been thinking of trying out Black light at some point, but for more the normal FPS shooters, BF3 owns me quite badly. Almost down with 900 hours, and if that's any indicator of being addicted, then I certainly am, and happy to be. Tried planetside, but it just fell off, was too impersonal for my taste.

I did play some Warframe and still have it installed. The early levels (maps) seemed very copy-paste, and that was really my only complaint. As long as later levels get more interesting, I can see myself playing a lot more.

"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP"

Savyg wrote:I can speak for Blacklight Retribution being a great game, but I can also speak for it being one of the most horrible examples of the money pit when it comes to F2P games. Sure, you don't need to spend money, but you could easily end up spending hundreds or thousands to get everything. (I'm not averse to spending money, but I am averse to it being completely unreasonable.)

Err, what? It's $100 to buy everything in the game.

Not only do you not HAVE to spend money in BLR at all, like you said, it's really quick to farm up the GP (in-game points) for an item. In just an hour or so of play, you can earn the GP for a permanent weapon part; in two hours, you can earn a permanent armor piece. I haven't spent much money on the game at all and in my 260 hours playing, I've purchased almost all of the receivers, about half the armor, and 2/3 the other gun parts. Most of what I've bought with real money are things that you COULDN'T buy with in-game money, like the LMG-Recon receiver (purchasable ingame now, but it wasn't for a long time.)

Savyg wrote:Been playing Warframe myself which has a much more balanced service as far as what they expect you to spend

YOU ARE ON CRACK! Warframe has THE MOST egregious and blatant cash-grab real-money shop I have seen in a game that didn't come out of Korea -- and it's worse than most of the ones that did! (Actually, I've since started playing Neverwinter, and it is somehow even worse, incredibly -- $40 for a mount!) New Warframes besides the starters -- that's basically the same as a new Champion in League of Legends, except it affects gameplay much less -- START at $15. (225 Platinum.) The more expensive warframes are TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS. All this does is change your appearance and powers, the latter of which has very little effect on gameplay for most frames -- and by the way, this is the ONLY way to change your appearance outside of ugly helms ($5 apiece) and recolors.

I like Warframe; I like the gameplay, I like the graphics, I like it in concept. Still, saying that Warframe's cash shop is more fair than Blacklight's is BLATANTLY FALSE. For $25 in Blacklight: Retribution, I can buy a completely new weapon -- the parts for which I can use with the rest of my library of gun parts -- AND a new character or set of armor. For $25 in Warframe I get ... a new appearance and a few new powers I probably won't even use except in special situations. Oh, and I get to level up from scratch again; that's fun.

Aphasia wrote:Just started playing Warframe myself less then 3 days ago. If you are active and just upgrade your initial warframe - you can get quite far in as little as 2 days. Just crafted a paris and dual ethers and got myself up a notch or three by that. So compared to say diablo it's much less of a grind since you can actually gather resources more focused since they aren't totally random drops.

They ARE random drops, as much as they are in any other game. All you can do is go to an area where you know they drop; then you're at the mercy of the RNG gods. It's no different from other games; if you're farming Troll Sweat in WoW, you wouldn't go fight Orcs.

superjawes wrote:I did play some Warframe and still have it installed. The early levels (maps) seemed very copy-paste, and that was really my only complaint. As long as later levels get more interesting, I can see myself playing a lot more.

The levels in Warframe are procedurally generated from a set of premade "tiles". They're all random. There are "only" three tilesets, each with an "infested" variant. I hope they add more tilesets, rather than simply more tiles.

Last edited by auxy on Sat May 04, 2013 3:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

auxy wrote:YOU ARE ON CRACK! Warframe has THE MOST egregious and blatant cash-grab real-money shop I have seen in a game that didn't come out of Koreab -- and it's worse than most of the ones that did! (Actually, I've since started playing Neverwinter, and it is somehow even worse, incredibly -- $40 for a mount!) New Warframes besides the starters -- that's basically the same as a new Champion in League of Legends, except it affects gameplay much less -- START at $15. (225 Platinum.) The more expensive warframes are TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS. All this does is change your appearance and powers, the latter of which has very little effect on gameplay for most frames -- and by the way, this is the ONLY way to change your appearance outside of ugly helms ($5 apiece) and recolors.

I like Warframe; I like the gameplay, I like the graphics, I like it in concept. Still, saying that Warframe's cash shop is more fair than Blacklight's is BLATANTLY FALSE. For $25 in Blacklight: Retribution, I can buy a completely new weapon -- the parts for which I can use with the rest of my library of gun parts -- AND a new character or set of armor. For $25 in Warframe I get ... a new appearance and a few new powers I probably won't even use except in special situations. Oh, and I get to level up from scratch again; that's fun.

For $20 in Warframe, I got two new Frames (one was 75 plat and one was 225 plat) and a catalyst to double the mod load on one of my weapons. And are you serious? The powers are far more devastating than your weapons. Of course you'll use them.

And yes, leveling up from scratch is fun, since it's capped at rank 30 at the moment you can't really expect to play endlessly with one frame.

I don't even know what you're talking about really.

Last edited by Savyg on Fri May 03, 2013 4:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Savyg wrote:For $20 in Warframe, I got two new Frames (one was $5 and one was $10 worth) and a catalyst to double the mod load on one of my weapons.

No you didn't. Not unless they changed the pricing, or you bought Excalibur and Volt. :lol: Or maybe there was a sale. I haven't logged in in a week or so, so maybe it's different, but the frames were 75 platinum, 225, and 375. 1 Platinum = $0.0666... which comes out to $5, $15, and $25.

Savyg wrote:And are you serious? The powers are far more devastating than your weapons. Of course you'll use them.

SOME of the powers are, sure. Of course, you have to have energy to use them, which are totally random drops. I've gone whole missions without any energy dropping.

And most of the powers are totally useless, or useless compared to your guns or other powers, which means that using them LIMITS your ability to use your OTHER powers, since they all draw from the same energy pool and there are no cooldowns to prevent you from spamming your ridiculously overpowered "good" power, assuming you have energy, which sometimes drops like candy from every enemy. Ugh! I really wish they'd fix that.

Savyg wrote:And yes, leveling up from scratch is fun, since it's capped at rank 30 at the moment you can't really expect to play endlessly with one frame.

"Since there's a level cap, grinding up levels is more fun"? What? Are you even thinking about what you're typing? Of course I'd like to use more than one frame, but it's irritating being unable to load up my artifact modules when I change frames. Having to grind up ranks again is NOT fun for me. I don't even know why it would be.

auxy wrote:No you didn't. Not unless they changed the pricing, or you bought Excalibur and Volt. Or maybe there was a sale. I haven't logged in in a week or so, so maybe it's different, but the frames were 75 platinum, 225, and 375. 1 Platinum = $0.0666... which comes out to $5, $15, and $25.

SOME of the powers are, sure. Of course, you have to have energy to use them, which are totally random drops. I've gone whole missions without any energy dropping.

And most of the powers are totally useless, or useless compared to your guns or other powers, which means that using them LIMITS your ability to use your OTHER powers, since they all draw from the same energy pool and there are no cooldowns to prevent you from spamming your ridiculously overpowered "good" power, assuming you have energy, which sometimes drops like candy from every enemy. Ugh! I really wish they'd fix that.

"Since there's a level cap, grinding up levels is more fun"? What? Are you even thinking about what you're typing? Of course I'd like to use more than one frame, but it's irritating being unable to load up my artifact modules when I change frames. Having to grind up ranks again is NOT fun for me. I don't even know why it would be.

I got 370 for $20 with the basic founders package and I got Volt (75) and Saryn (225)

It gives you a reason to use the other frames. I'm not saying I'd prefer to switch frames but the game isn't done. I imagine the level cap will be raised later on. And it is fun to use different power sets.

Also I don't know which update you played at but they have expanded the level sets. I'm sure work is continuing in that area. I started at update 5 and it definately wasn't all that and a bag of chips back then.

Savyg wrote:I got 370 for $20 with the basic founders package and I got Volt (75) and Saryn (225)

Founders pricing is more generous than the regular Platinum pricing. Normally it's 6.6¢ per platinum; founders pricing starts at 5.4¢ per platinum.

Savyg wrote:Also I don't know which update you played at but they have expanded the level sets. I'm sure work is continuing in that area. I started at update 5 and it definately wasn't all that and a bag of chips back then.

Yah, I started right after update 6. I wasn't the one complaining about the levels seeming samey, tho; I thought the level design was well-done. ^^

I've already got Volt, Excalibur, Saryn, and Nyx and hopefully I'll be able to build one sooner or later. I find their powers very useful, especially on the bigger enemies. Nyxes 'uber'ability depends on her taking damage to reflect it back though, so it's hard to get in the right situation to use it (edit: without acting like an idiot.)

Also, the wiki is fantastic. My brother bought Ember and didn't know what the powers did so he thought his best ability sucked until I told him to check what it actually did.

honestly I'd rather keep using Nyx but the lack of ranking past 30 makes that a bit of a pain.

With Pluto being level range 35-50 I can't imagine they're going to be too much longer raising the level cap, we'll see though.

Aphasia wrote:Just started playing Warframe myself less then 3 days ago. If you are active and just upgrade your initial warframe - you can get quite far in as little as 2 days. Just crafted a paris and dual ethers and got myself up a notch or three by that. So compared to say diablo it's much less of a grind since you can actually gather resources more focused since they aren't totally random drops.

They ARE random drops, as much as they are in any other game. All you can do is go to an area where you know they drop; then you're at the mercy of the RNG gods. It's no different from other games; if you're farming Troll Sweat in WoW, you wouldn't go fight Orcs.

Actually, if they drop are random, but they aren't totally random. Since the end boss of Saturn, drop Ash warframe blueprints, if you want ash, you can farm that boss for the parts/blueprints.The Raven drops rhino parts, want a rhino, go farm the raven. Once you have the blueprints, you need resources, and every planet is clearly marked in which resources that drops, there's just about never more then 3 types of resources found on each planet, hence, you farm the systems with the types of resources that you need.

On top of that you have the alerts, that gives you extra money, or special drops. Which is how I got the glaive blueprint. Because there was an alert for that. So if the weapons aren't generally available for in-game money, they usually do a blueprint drop every now and then even for those restricted weapons.

That's what I mean by focused, the amount is fairly random, as are which drop you get from a boss, but it's still tons better then a full RNG like diablo where you really cant farm for any specific parts outside of the Hellfire and ûber-bosses. In diablo, you want to farm a certain legendary set like Natalys, or the kings, now tell me which boss that have a chance to drop those specific plans/pieces and doesn't drop other things...

Planetside on the other hand was so much of a grind I couldn't stand it. Unless they have changed it, it took litterarly forever to farm enough to get good weapons to replace your standard ones. Blacklight I haven't tested yet, but I watched totalbiscuits video of it, and it seemed to be fairly balanced in that in-game currency was decent in amount and while all weapons weren't available, the ones that were, are competitive, so it wasn't a pay2win scenario.

Okay, well, I wasn't even considering games like Diablo where it's impossible to properly farm things. That's just stupid, I don't even play those games. Waste of time. "As random as any other sensible game with random drops." You still have to farm the boss for hours to get the drops you want, because you might get -- as I did -- ten Trinity Helmets before you ever see a Trinity Chassis.

Yeah, Diablo turned into a auction simulator in many respects Yeah, nothing discounting that you get multiples of the same, that's with the RNG. I come mostly from Mass Effect 3 MP which relate in some ways to warframe. In ME you can just farm credits, then buy packs which have different chances for each class, but you cant really aim for something. In that way I find warframe to be less random, despite being randomized within each context, and so far I'm fine with that for something that still quite a big farming element.